Installing Low Pressure Hose

[LACityBoy]

Thanks everyone for your patience with us novice divers...

I have a brand new Zeagle Envoy II Regulator setup, with 2nd stage primary and alternate.

I noticed that my LPI hose came in a separate package and was not installed by the dive shop. No worries.

I unscrewed a LP screw from the 1st stage and screwed in my hose with a nice hand-tightening. It seems pretty connected as it's difficult to unscrew.

Do I need a little wrench tightening, as well, or am I good to go?

I've read other related posts and some say "hand tight only" and others say "hand-tight + wrench."

Is it splitting hairs? THANKS!!!

 

[halocline]

Just a bit tighter than hand tight is fine.

 

[rsingler]

A common specification is 25-40 in-lb. So with a 5" wrench, a 5-8# pull gets you 25-40 in-lb, more or less. While hand tight is common among tec divers at the second stage end, you don't want your oring to extrude behind your head because your LPI hose came unscrewed a bit. So at the first stage, hand-tight + a bit of wrench.
But remember, most first stages are brass, and it won't take much for you to strip threads.

Ah! As always, halo beats me to it, and much more concisely.

 

[LACityBoy]

I know I'm such a loser, but my dad was a lawyer and never taught me these basic life lessons... Thus, I don't know the difference between a "5-8# pull" and a roast-beef sandwich. Although, I'm pretty certain the mayo goes with the sandwich.

But what I gleaned, from both of your kind contributions to my dilemma, is "hand-tight + a little wrench... Not too tight!

But, what I fail to understand is why would a tec diver have a different protocol than any other kind of diver, when it came to tightening hoses onto a first stage?

Boy, the education here just never ends...lol

Thanks

 

[WarrenZ]

Tec divers are weird. Dont worry about them.

Use a short wrench no more than 6" and just a couple of fingers on it to tighten after finger tight. You are only going to put a 1/8-1/4 turn to snug it up.

The German ethnic alternative torque specs are: lugnuts on your car: goooden-tight
Brass regulator parts: frauline-tight

 

[rsingler]

Pull 5 to 8 pounds worth. Two thirds of a bowling ball worth of pull on a short wrench. As @halocline said, "a bit tighter than hand tight".

Some tec divers want to be able to change or remove or clean out the sand from a second stage in a crisis (like in a cave where a tight restriction filled it full of grit). So while they're breathing off their other, they'll turn off the tank in question, use their other tank, unscrew the second stage from the hose and fix their problem. Having the second stage only finger tight allows them to remove it. It's all about redundancy.

 

[Centrals]

Some rec as well as tec divers are weird, not all of them thankfully.

 

[Raphus]

Jeah hand tight and just a little push by a wrench. It should not move much. Just so, that u cant unscrew it with you hands anymore.

Some stuff techis do might look weird. But there is a lot to be learned. And more and more rec diver adapt their gear towards dir/tech configuration.

There is so much to learn

 

[LACityBoy]

Hahaha... I think you're all correct... Tec divers, and all divers, to some degree, are a bit "off center."

But the explanation as to why tec divers might want a little bit of a loser connection, makes perfect sense... Thanks for taking the time to enlighten...

 

[Angelo Farina]

Many tec divers use Scubapro regulators. At the second stage end of their hoses there is not a normal hex nut (designed for a wrench). Instead they have a finned nut, designed to be hand-screwed, and then protected by a special rubber sleeve, which allows the second stage to rotate freely, while protecting the finned nut and so avoiding the risk that it gets accidentally unscrewed.
The advantage of hand-screwed second stages is the possibility, in some emergency conditions, of unscrewing the reg and swapping with another one.
I always did this hand-tightening on my SP 2nd stages, albeit I am not a tec divers. And it revealed indeed useful, in some cases, to be able to swap quickly the second stage without needing any tool.
This occurred to me just on the boat, I did never need to do this underwater.